A few weeks ago, Gazeta Wyborcza launched a new bestseller list. If it serves as a measure of the condition of Polish literature, one could say that we have come down with the same illness as the rest of the world: crime Larssonosis, romance-gastronomic Gilbertosis and vampiric Meyerosis. Vampires in particular featured heavily in the ratings; this should be a source of delight for us, as vampires are a Slavic invention. One can learn about their heritage from The Vampire: A Symbolic Biography by Maria Janion, one of the most outstanding Polish scholars of literary Romanticism. If this invaluable work were translated into English (what a pity you haven't translated it yet), the followers of Stephenie Meyer would have a chance to refresh their knowledge of creatures that balance between life and death. We call them "upiory", "strzygi", "brukolaki" or "wapierze".

The launch of our bestseller list coincided with the publication of a book that caused enormous controversy: Golden Harvest by Jan Tomasz Gross and Irena Grudzinska-Gross. The scandal broke even before it appeared in bookshops. Its subject is the participation of Poles in the so-called third phase of the Holocaust, when Poles denounced their Jewish neighbours (Neighbours is the title of the first of Gross's books about the relations between Poles and Jews during the second world war) to pillage their property. Even their graves. This book has been taken by many as a blow to the image of Poles as innocent victims of the Nazis. And – as the authors emphasise – plundering Jewish property was common throughout Europe.

The Holocaust in Polish literature means primarily Hanna Krall, who ever since her book Shielding the Flame – a record of interviews with Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw ghetto uprising – has been producing volumes of brilliant stories about the fate of Poland's Jews. Each of these stories contains enough material for a novel, but Krall has the ability to distil the tragic and sometimes grotesque essence from the life of her heroes. Her next book, White Maria, will be published in a few weeks.

Krall started as a reporter, which is typical of Poland's flourishing non-fiction scene. She is still associated first and foremost with reportage, which in Poland is considered to be a genre somewhere between journalism and literature. Reading her books makes you wonder whether you are reading non-fiction or poetry.

This genre-busting nature of Polish reportage is also the source of many misunderstandings. When a biography of Poland's most eminent reporter (and the best-known Polish writer worldwide), Ryszard Kapuscinski, came out last year (Kapuscinski Non-fiction by Artur Domosławski), it provoked many arguments, including about the reporter's competence. To what degree should a reporter be just a witness, and to what degree an author who includes his or her own outlook, interpretations and literary style? Where does journalism (non-fiction) end, and literary fiction begin? This dispute remains unsettled, just like many other arguments provoked by Domosławski's book, such as the controversy over the attitudes that journalists and writers adopted during the communist years, or the extent to which a biographer can explore the personal life of his or her subject.

Regardless of the gravity of the charges against the so-called Polish School of Reportage, of which Kapuscinski was the most prominent representative, it is in good condition. Though it is ever rarer in the Polish press, it transfers relatively well to books. Successors of Kapuscinski – Mariusz Szczygieł, Jacek Hugo-Bader, Wojciech Tochman – appear near the top of the bestseller lists, and their works have been translated into all of the major European languages. So reportage is still a Polish speciality, although reporters tend now to wander the world and through history in their search for interesting subjects. Szczygieł devoted his book Gottland (winner of the 2009 European Book prize) to the conflicting attitudes that Czechs adopt towards communism; Hugo-Bader has travelled through a drink-sodden post-Soviet Russia (White Heat); while Tochman has analysed the consequences of the genocide in Rwanda (We Will Portray Death Today). Young writers are following their lead: in Murderer from the Apricot City, Witold Szabłowski reports on the cultural clashes and conflicts that divide contemporary Turkey as it attempts to join the European Union.

Poland's own accession to the EU, meanwhile, has resulted in a level of economic migration that has not yet been fully reflected in our literature. The only books that come to mind are a trilogy by one of Poland's most outstanding poets and essayists, Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, who has tried to vaccinate Poles against the supposed loss of national identity that some feared membership would bring. In Kinderszenen Rymkiewicz ostensibly emotionlessly recounts some of the bloodiest episodes from Polish history – first of all the 1944 Warsaw uprising (not to be confused with the Warsaw ghetto uprising), which cost the lives of 200,000 people – and tries to make these victims a foundation for modern Polish society.

However, the literary mainstream is made up of authors who follow Witold Gombrowicz, who teaches distance from those models of Polish identity. Janusz Rudnicki, Marcin Swietlicki, Michał Witkowski and Jerzy Pilch are writers who find their own ironic ways of dealing with our literary tradition. The most important writer of this group is Pilch – not only because of his novels, but also because of his position as the country's leading columnist. In view of the vanishing significance of literary criticism, which is now found only in niche magazines, and – I must admit with a heavy heart – the claustrophobia that affects newspapers' cultural pages, Pilch is considered an authority on literature.

Dorota Masłowska owes him a lot. Her White and Red was the most important debut to appear in the first 20 years after independence. It is seemingly a realist novel about the dregs of society, but in fact the broken language of its heroes, full of references to pop culture and different subcultures, perfectly reflects the chaotic consciousness of all Poles living through those days of political and social transformation. Her second novel, The Queen's Peacock, won the Nike, Poland's most important literary award. It's worth stressing here that awards are another substitute for literary criticism, though this is by no means an exclusively Polish phenomenon. The list of Nike laureates gives quite a reliable insight into the most important trends and names in Polish literature. Take poetry, which competes on equal terms with novels and essays for the title of the best book of the year. It is significant that the last two Nobel prizes for literature won by Poles went to poets: Czesław Miłosz (1981) and Wisława Szymborska (1996).

Who is likely to win the Nike award this year? Balladyny i romanse ("Ballads and Romances") by the young novelist Ignacy Karowicz is my favourite. It is an ironic story about gods from various large and small religions who decide to give up immortality and begin living a "normal" life among Poles. However, these gods share suspiciously Polish notions about the citizens of western Europe. Is life in a block of flats with worn-out gods, who desperately look to find their own place in the world, a metaphor for our presence in the European Union?